Ask-A-Linguist Message Details

Subject:

Verbs of Smell

Question:

In English, Spanish, and French there seems to be just one verb
smell/oler/sentir which means both to emit a scent and to take in a
scent. The roses smell beautiful/ I smell the roses.
In Slavic they tend to be different verbs (Polish pachniec vs.
wachac), and I was wondering which pattern is more common cross
linguistically (English/Spanish/French or Polish/Slavic). I would
be grateful for pointers towards literature on the verbs of smell
as well as examples of smell verbs from different languages.
Thank you very much,
Kat Dziwirek

Reply:

Since you haven’t had any replies from our Ask-a-Linguist panel yet, the issue might be that we are unable to assist you. You may want to post your query to the Linguist List instead, where it will reach a much larger and broader specialist circle. Just copy and paste your question on this site:
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm
I hope this helps!
Madalena